Are you a Maker? Are you technically creative and part of the Maker Movement whose relentless desire is to design and innovate in Visual Arts, Music, Design and the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields? If you are, you might want to consider Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
At the recent NACAC 2015 Conference in San Diego, when asked about what MIT is looking for in their Engineering program, the Dean of Engineering said that in his mind what makes a successful engineering student is an individual who has a “passion for solving problems, creativity and design”, and one who is “interested in building things”. The student should be “multidimensional, have strong communication and interpersonal skills, strong ethics,” and be someone who “wants to change the world.” Stu Schmill of MIT Admissions wholeheartedly concurs and elaborates by adding that the Maker in prospective students should be aiming “to figure out what the problem is first” and then have “interpersonal skills for discovering that”. They have to be “able to ask questions and inquire!” Nowhere in their responses did they say that engineers have to solve math differential equations.
Yes, math is necessary, and having a basic level that can be built on is important. But MIT believes that if you are a Maker, your technical and creative talent and desire to create are ultimately more important, and are essential! Many young students who feel like they can’t do math or don’t like math, say that they are “not a math person.” However, math is an object, finite process, and the way it is taught at the high school level does not help to promote creativity. Therefore, strong math students are not necessarily best suited for engineering: Schmill maintains that the adage — a good math student should go into engineering — can be a “wrong stereotype and it can be destructive.”
To support technically creative young students and empower the Maker, Lilly Kam, an MIT alum and the Director of the I.am.Angel Foundation in Los Angeles, has developed a STEM program for middle and junior high school students to design and create robotics and video games. The foundation was initially started by Will.i.am, the famed artist, musician, technologist and entrepreneur. The students’ work to create a pyramid of robotics would be entered into the US FIRST Robotics competition, which is funded by aerospace and mechanical engineering companies. In Canada, check out First Robotics Canada for a similar program.
The kids would present at Raytheon, an aerospace company and participate in hackathons or “code-athons”, which is a 24-hour event to code and develop software to solve community program and health issues, making functional apps. These young computer-tech enthusiasts in the Foundation learn coding on the weekend, use Oculus, a 3-D software, to create video games and work with 3-D design software for 3-D printing utilizing computer-aided design (CAD) programs.
Emily Sheldon, the Senior Assistant Director of MIT Admissions, believes identifying artists, musicians, technically creative and academically talented students is crucial to the admission process and can be achieved through the critical portfolio submissions by student applicants. MIT’s Maker Portfolio (MP), originally created for visual arts and music pieces, has been invaluable in capturing a student’s talent. It helped to standardize a formerly ad-hoc process and helped to provide expert evaluation of technical-creativity by the Engineering Advisory Board (EAB). In the last two years, over 1000 Maker Portfolios were submitted to assist the MIT admissions committee in look for Makers! Are you up for it?
